ARCHIVED AND MOVED

Ever the predator with a penchant for keeping his eye on potential prey that interested him, the cyborg had decided on a whim one day that it couldn’t hurt to have a runner keeping an eye on Volt. He swore to himself it wasn’t because he cared. He didn’t. He just wanted to be able to know where she was. To keep her on her toes. It wasn’t concern that spurred it on. No, it was more like... a game. Something to keep his hunting instincts as a street samurai alive and sharp. And she was an ideal moving target. So swift, so tough, so resilient. No wonder he kept coming back for more.

So when his favorite target stopped moving, he knew right away. His runner alerted him the instant she’d stopped in a very unusual place. It wasn’t one of her usual lurks. It was far into Scav territory - the kind of place she’d only ever go if she was getting paid big money for a job. Adam didn’t think much of it at first, until his eye in the sky informed him that she had stopped nearly ten minutes ago. And he hadn’t pinged a signal from her since. Adam disregarded it again. “Volt’s a big girl. She can take care of herself. Just keep an eye on her from the cameras and let me know when you see her.”

He waited on the rooftop overlooking his latest target’s penthouse, scoping out the place and waiting for the poor bastard to make the mistake of stepping outside so Smasher could use him as a landing pad for his 2,000 pounds of steel-ass. And he waited. And waited. And waited. Five minutes turned to fifteen, fifteen turned to thirty, thirty turned to forty-five. Adam got... a feeling. Some strange sensations caught somewhere between his synapses and his circuits. Like something was weighing on the wiring of his mechanical limbs. It was coming up on an hour and he finally reached out to his netrunner. “Where is she?”

“I-I don’t know.” The runner responded nervously. “She’s not on any of the cams. Still no ping but... Smasher... One of those Scavs came out of their shop drenched in blood.”

“And?” That wasn’t surprising. Scavs were like vultures - burying themselves in the carcasses they scraped up and emerging covered in gore. That didn’t mean anything. The feeling of that tension on his coils growing didn’t mean anything.

“They had one of her arms...” The runner responded grimly.

There was a long stretch of silence. The comm link was dead air for easily over a minute. That sensation tickling his mechanics suddenly felt like an intense pressure. A long forgotten sense of nausea washed over him briefly, pushed back by his legs straightening up. He turned away from his current objective, voice stern and monotonous. “Coordinates. Now.”

It took him maybe ten minutes to get there. Hopping over buildings, nearly crushing people, swatting cars out of his way. The further into the burned out slums he went the more and more he was convinced that she hadn’t come here willingly. He pinged the cameras all around, finding most of them still down from a stubborn Daemon with her signature on it. No use there. Luckily, he managed to find a trail of blood - her blood - leading into one of the buildings. At the sight of him, the Scavs began scrambling. A few were dumb enough to open fire, but their blood  quickly joined hers in streaking the ground. He followed the bodies into a shoddy-looking operating theater. He didn’t need to scan the area. He felt his artificial heart momentarily stop the moment his eyes landed on the grimy steel table.

There she was. Gutted, gored, and missing two limbs with her other two mostly cut through and barely hanging on. He rushed over, slamming his fingers into the edge of the metal surface and feeling it crumple under his grip.

“Volt!” He yelled. “Volt! Answer me, damn it!” He was in her face, augmented voice blaring into deaf ears. Her eyes were open, but they looked wrong... They were glazed over, like she was already dead. A quick scan showed him that she wasn’t all that far from it. She needed a ripper. She needed Jaxen. Now.

Adam couldn’t recall the last time he’d been so delicate with anything. Cold metal arms scooped her up, doing their damnedest not to let anymore of her intestines fall out of her. He was glad his limbs weren’t capable of shaking. He was certain if his legs weren’t made of reinforced tubes and plating, he might have fallen to his knees. He couldn’t understand or explain why the feeling of dread came over him and made him feel like Atlas carrying the world when it was just Volt in his arms, but he felt crushed by it all. Breathing was hard and running was even harder. the world flew by in a mess of colors and lights, his body barreling through things and struggling to shield her as he charged recklessly to the only place he could think of to save her.

He felt... weak once he arrived. He didn’t like feeling like that. Almost as much as he didn’t like the scream that Jaxen let out, or the fact that he couldn’t follow Volt on her floating stretcher back into the operating room. He wanted his runner to tap in a show him what was happening. Boldly (and perhaps a little queasily), the man refused. “You don’t want to see her like that.” As angry as it made him, Adam had a feeling that the man was probably right. He was barely stomaching the sight of Volt half-dead on that grimy operating table that was now burned into his brain. And he didn’t even have the guts to feel that way anymore. All he could was sit in the lobby, cramped onto a tiny bench that creaked under his weight, optics glued to the door.

It was two days before Jaxen let him in. Before he was able to get from his bench where he’d been dutifully standing guard like a loyal dog. No food, no water, and no money from that last job he bailed on. Jaxen seemed surprised to see him. Still, she smiled softly and put a hand on his forearm, telling him she was grateful and to go see his partner. That word made him feel strange. The tickle in his circuits came back, though it wasn’t quite so uncomfortable now. Reluctantly, Adam stomped through the door to her room. Seeing her on so many tubes and lines and without two of her limbs did nothing to ease the ache on his hardware, but seeing that she was awake- seeing those vibrant blue eyes glance over to him, alive and shining with life- that did. It made that tickle turn into a warmth.

“Hey, you...” She cooed weakly, glancing over to the chair by her bedside. He hesitated to move forward and squat down in it. She let out an airy laugh and that warmth felt like hot oil pouring over him. “Still can’t fit your ass in a chair, can ya?”

He grumbled, huffing to himself. “You would be joking at a time like this.”

“Oh? You’re taking this seriously? I didn’t know you cared-” she wheezed for a moment, coughing for several seconds. Adam jolted, raising a hand that he didn’t quite know what to do with. He was reluctant to touch her, afraid- no, not afraid- worried that he might do more damage to her. She noticed.

“Oh relax, I’m not made out of glass.”

“Your situation is delicate.” He responded sternly.

“I’ll bounce back. I always do.” She shrugged, wincing at the ache it caused.

“What were you doing out there?” It was a less a question, more of a demand.

“Work.” She responded plainly.

“Bullshit. You never go over to that side of town.”

“Well, this time I did.” She pouted, clearly getting annoyed with his interrogating of her. “What? You my dad now? You suddenly grow a conscience in the last week or something - what gives? Why do you give a shit?”

He ignored her. “Valerie-”

“Don’t.” She hissed suddenly, and Adam realized what he’d said. “Don’t. You. Dare.”

“God damn it, Volt- I found you dead on a Scav’s table, I deserve to know how THE FUCK  you got there!”

There was a moment of intense quiet between them, eyes locked in a set of death glares. Neither was quite ready or wanting to back down. Volt bit her lip and sulked into herself. “...It was an XBD.”

“...What.” He growled.

“Some guy in Japantown was selling XBDs out of a shack. I got curious and snagged one. Must’ve been bugged.”

“You’re telling me you almost died for a BRAINDANCE?”

“It was part of a job-” She shouted back, only to be interrupted by a nasty coughing fit. She spat out some of the blood that pooled in her mouth from it before continuing. “Fixer told me I was picking it up for some dropoff and to scope it beforehand to make sure it wasn’t bugged! It was gonkbrained idea-”

“No shit!” He snarled, backing up so he could huff out his anger before he punched a wall and got an earful from Jax again about “tearing up her establishment”. Another long silence fell over them, tense and uncomfortable. When it was filled, it was with her solemn over the sound of the EKG beeping over her head. “So... you’re the one that found me?”

The cyborg was quiet. The rage left him in an instant, the image of her body on that table returning to the forefront of his mind and making him feel sick again. “Yeah.” He said simply, but Volt could tell he wanted to say more. “I’d never seen you like that before. Even after I got done with you, you didn’t look like that. You weren’t moving or breathing. I tried screaming to see if you’d get up but you didn’t answer. I thought that... you were already dead.”

He trailed off and Volt frowned. A certain softness came to her eyes as she looked over at him. “Adam...”

‘your eyes were open but you were … gone.’ 

He fell deathly quiet once more and Volt squirmed a bit. She tried at a weak smile when he finally pulled his gaze up from where it had dropped down to the floor by his feet. “It’s okay. I’m here now.”

He huffed out a breath, swallowing his pride just a bit to add, “I didn’t like seeing you like that. I didn’t want you to die.”

“Because you love me?” There was no playful edge, no teasing to her words. /he grunted a bit, drawing a faint little giggle from her. “C’mere, big guy.”

Adam let out a puzzled sound. “Just c’mere!”

He scooted a little closer, leaning down to entertain her. He watched curiously as she used all of her strength to raise herself up from the bed, freezing as he felt her lips press a warm, soft kiss to the guard across his jaw right where his mouth would be. That warmth pouring over him flared up, threatening to consume him with the strongest desire to kiss back. But he couldn’t. As she fell back into the sheets, it felt like she took a piece of him with her. Those lovely blue eyes were lidded, a sly little smile lingering on her lips as she looked over his frozen form, and he swore that as she spoke he felt his artificial heart stop again.